Free The Fever Tree and Other Stories by Ruth Rendell

for me, and as soon as I caught her eye I veered off into the forest once more. She gave a sort of shrug, turned and walked on. She wasn’t frightened yet.
    It was getting dark, though, and there was no moon. I caught her up and walked alongside her, very quietly, only three or four yards away, yet in among the trees of the forest. By then we were out of sight of the parked car and a long way from being in sight of the lights of Theydon. The road was dark, though far from being impenetrably black. I trod on a twig deliberately and made it snap and she turned swiftly and saw me.
    She jumped. She looked away immediately and quickened her pace. Of course she didn’t have a chance with me, a five-foot woman doesn’t with a six-foot man. The fastest she could walk was still only my strolling pace.
    There hadn’t been a car along the road since I’d been following her. Now one came. I could see its lights welling and dipping a long way off, round the twists in the road. She went to the edge of the pavement and held up her hand the way a hitchhiker does. I stayed where I was to see what would happen. What had I done, after all? Only been there. But the driver didn’t stop for her. Of course he didn’t, no more than I would have done in his place. We all know the sort of man who stops his car to pick up smartly dressed, pretty hitchhikers at night and we know what he’s after.
    The next driver didn’t stop either. I was a little ahead of her by then, still inside the forest, and in his headlights I saw her face. She was pretty, not that that aspect particularly interested me, but I saw that she was pretty and that she belonged to the same type as Carol, a small slender blonde with rather sharp features and curly hair.
    The darkness seemed much darker after the car lights had passed. I could tell she was a little less tense now, she probably hadn’t seen me for the past five minutes, she might have thought I’d gone. And I was tempted to call it a day, give up after a quarter of an hour, as I usually did when I’d had my fun.
    I wish to God I had. I went on with it for the stupidest of reasons. I went on with it because I wanted to go in the same direction as she was going, down into Theydon and catch the tube train from there, rather than go back and hang about waiting for a bus. I could have waited and let her go. I didn’t. Out of some sort of perverse need, I kept step with her and then I came out of the forest and got on to the pavement behind her.
    I walked along, gaining on her, but quietly. The road dipped, wound a little. I got two or three yards behind her, going very softly, she didn’t know I was there, and then I began a soft whistling, a hymn tune it was, the Crimond version of The Lord is My Shepherd. What a choice!
    She spun round. I thought she was going to say something but I don’t think she could. Her voice was strangled by fear. She turned again and began to run. She could run quite fast, that tiny vulnerable blonde girl.
    The car lights loomed up over the road ahead. They were full-beam, undipped headlights, blazing blue-white across the surrounding forest, showing up every tree and making long black shadows spring from their trunks. I jumped aside and crouched down in the long grass. She ran into the road, holding up both arms and crying: ‘Help me! Help me!’
    He stopped. I had a moment’s tension when I thought he might get out and come looking for me, but he didn’t. He pushed open the passenger door from inside. The girl got in, they waited, sitting there for maybe half a minute, and then the white Ford Capri moved off.
    It was a relief to me to see that car disappear over the top of the hill. And I realized, to coin a very appropriate phrase, that I wasn’t yet out of the wood. What could be more likely than that girl and the car driver would either phone or call in at Loughton police station? I knew I’d better get myself